Every week, you know, I’d get my allowance and Saturday morning and I would go down to the drugstore in my small town and I’d buy as many comics as I could afford on my buck and a half.
And I liked
This is a whole ‘nother rap, but I preferred DC Comics over Marvel and the only Marvel Comics I really liked were Fantastic Four because there was this kind of family unit where they had this family dynamic going. But DC Comics were more of outward looking. In other words, you know, Superman and Batman, except for Batman was a little bit dark, but Superman, the Flash, the Atom, Johnny Cloud, you name them, they had kind of bland personalities but they were engaged in really interesting villains and they went on interesting adventures.
But they were kind of steady at ease. They didn’t have a lot of interior conflicts. They weren’t tortured by, you know
The Marvel Comics, you know, they were all like
You know, Spiderman was always torn between all of these demons, you know, of course, the Thing, which was part of Fantastic Four, you know, he hated being the Thing.
He thought he was a monster. You know, they had this inner turmoil going on which was really interesting to some people, but not to me as a kid. I wanted to explore the universe with Superman because, you know, he could fly in outer space, or the Atom rides on photons, you know, light particles, you know, cause he’s so small. So he can roam around at the speed of light.
And I was more interested in that, in the science of that and all that other stuff. The Marvel Comics, their villains, they always had just one villain, right? Just like Fantastic Four was always up against Dr. Doom and, you know, okay, what more are we gonna do with Dr. Doom. And I’m really not interested in the Thing’s inner conflict anymore and I’d really rather go with Superman and find out a way to to to trick Mr. Mxyzptlk — to say his name backwards.
That is more interesting. Now how are we gonna do that? Or Lex Luther would get together all the arch-villains of history. You know, he’d get Hitler, Napoleon and Julius Caesar, which I don’t think are really arch-villains. But Lex Luther would bring em back into modern times and you’d have Julius Caesar ruling New York City and Hitler trying to take over South America, and I thought that was much more interesting. So that’s my comics rap.